As much performer as activist, the creator of the rainbow flag also made memorable protest drag costumes

Gilbert Baker, the ‘gay Betsy Ross’

For Gilbert Baker, sequins and rhinestones weren’t just fabulous. In his hands, they became political.

The late artist and activist is best known for creating the Gay Pride rainbow flag 40 years ago in San Francisco, which he never trademarked so that it could be freely reproduced and flown in the Castro and around the world. He was known in the LGBT community as “the gay Betsy Ross.”

But there’s a lesser-known legacy: Baker also used his sewing skills to execute dozens of drag ensembles that he wore to protests and celebrations dating back to the 1970s. He melded politics with these theatrical garments for a form of performative activism, at events ranging from Gay Pride celebrations and the Oscars to the aftermath of the election of Donald Trump.

Charley Beal, a friend of Baker’s and his estate’s creative projects manager, says that “Gilbert knew the power of fashion in a ‘Devil Wears Prada’ kind of way. He used that power to make statements, quite often political statements.”

Flag drag & the Statue of Liberty

It is fitting that among the garments presented on the rack at the GLBT Historical Society archives are variations of American flag drag created and worn by Baker: A rhinestone-embellished frock sparkles as it catches the light. A fishtail flag gown with matching picture hat gives the impression of a patriotic Mae West. A green sequin gown's inspiration suddenly becomes clear when its matching tiara and bedazzled torch are unboxed: a gender-bending Statue of Liberty. These are just a sample of the Gilbert Baker Collection, gifted to the organization after Baker's death from heart failure in 2017 at age 65.

“It was important to us and the estate that the materials be housed here in San Francisco, where a lot of that started,” says Joanna Black, the director of archives and special collections at the historical society. “What he did in his time in San Francisco had repercussions we’re still feeling today.”

Cleve Jones, the activist and author of “When We Rise,” first met Baker in the 1970s. The two remained friends and collaborators for the rest of Baker’s life.

“When Gilbert was in drag, like all queens, he sparkled, he was mischievous, defiant and yet motherly in some strange way,” says Jones. “Sometimes the reaction would make people speechless, or they’d ask, ‘What the f— does that mean?’”

According to Beal, a film and television art director who art directed the film “Milk” (in which Baker had a cameo), extravagant and gender-creative dressing was long a part of Baker’s life, going back to his childhood in Parsons, Kan.

“It started at 5, when he was caught dressing in his aunt’s ball gowns,” says Beal. “He loved fashion.”

Baker’s sister, Ardonna Baker Cook, remembers Gilbert as an artistic child who loved to paint and spent “nights reading under his covers with a flashlight.”

In the early 1970s, he was drafted into the U.S. Army at age 19 and served for two years as a medic stationed in San Francisco, a city then at the beginning of a gay cultural awakening. After that, Baker began to live an openly gay life.

The new freedom gay men and women were experiencing then was mixed with a residual hippie ethos from the Summer of Love and the radical protest spirit of the anti-war era. Activist and LGBT historian Jonathan Katz, a friend of Baker's since the 1990s, describes San Francisco in the early 1970s as a time of "soft, pansexual" presentation in the community — "an aesthetic that was more about confusing gender than validating traditional views of masculinity."

The front of the uniforms is emblazoned with the pink triangle used by the Nazis to identify gay prisoners, the back with the rainbow Gilbert Baker created to replace the triangle as a symbol for the community.

The front of the uniforms is emblazoned with the pink triangle used by the Nazis to identify gay prisoners, the back with the rainbow Gilbert Baker created to replace the triangle as a symbol for the community.

Photo: Mason Trinca / Special To The Chronicle

Photo: Mason Trinca / Special To The Chronicle

Image
1of/13

Caption

Close

Image 1 of 13

The front of the uniforms is emblazoned with the pink triangle used by the Nazis to identify gay prisoners, the back with the rainbow Gilbert Baker created to replace the triangle as a symbol for the community.

The front of the uniforms is emblazoned with the pink triangle used by the Nazis to identify gay prisoners, the back with the rainbow Gilbert Baker created to replace the triangle as a symbol for the community.

Photo: Mason Trinca / Special To The Chronicle

The untold story of rainbow flag creator Gilbert Baker, the ‘gay Betsy Ross’

1 / 13

Back to Gallery

Jones’ first impression of Baker, when they met in activist circles, was of a “mad queen with long, flowing hair and big bulging eyes.” Jones continues: “Just when you thought he was off his rocker, he’d say something and you’d realize how insanely smart he was.”

As the ’70s advanced, the styles for men in San Francisco’s gay community became more tied to traditional notions of masculinity, like the blue-collar work wear-influenced “Castro Clone” look that made garments like tight denim, boots and flannel shirts a kind of sexual uniform.

“Drag, too, which had been in the center of gay culture in many ways, was also suddenly pushed to the margins,” says Katz. “But for Gilbert, and many others, that kind of assimilation just wasn’t an option.”

Baker's drag, like his politics, wasn't traditional. Instead of gender-illusion, "pretty" drag, Baker's humorous and irreverent approach was subversive in both execution and ideology.

"For Gilbert, it was an attitude of, why would I protest using those terms of power?" says Katz, who now directs the department of global gender and sexuality studies at the University at Buffalo's visual studies doctoral program in New York. Through both activism and protest drag, Baker "sought to change how society was organized in general."

Gilbert Baker joined the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence in 1981, taking the name “Sister Chanel 2001,” and was a member until 1983. (Estate Of Gilbert Baker | San Francisco Chronicle)

The gay community performance group — where men dress in nuns’ habits and take pseudo-religious names — was founded in San Francisco in 1979 by Ken Bunch, Bill Graham, Fred Brungard and Edmund Garron partially in response to what they saw as the homogenization of the gay community.

“Fashion can be life-changing, it can create social change, it can confront prejudices,” says Bunch, a.k.a. Sister Vicious Power Hungry Bitch. “Having a man wear a nun’s habit is a stick of dynamite.”

The combination of Baker and the Sisters was, briefly, equally explosive.

Baker joined the order in 1981, taking the name Sister Chanel 2001, and was a member until 1983. In the years following the Harvey Milk assassination, during the rise of the AIDS epidemic, gay communities in San Francisco and other cities were a frequent target of protests by right-wing religious groups, and the religious groups were an equally frequent counter-protest target of the Sisters.

In an excerpt from his forthcoming memoir, Baker described the Sisters as “clowns and media marauders, straight out of the French Revolution. There was something magnificent and terrible about them, visually and symbolically.”

Aesthetics of Activism

“My first required appearance began when Sister Boom Boom and Sister Krishna Kosher planned a rally at Union Square. I created a copy of Princess Diana’s wedding gown — in black. Our job was to upstage a Christian fundamentalist revival going on in the little park, held by a group called S.O.S. — Save our Souls — who said that San Francisco was Sodom and Gomorrah. Sister Boom Boom, dressed up like a lion in chains and carrying a whip, was threatening to eat the Christians. ... We stayed until the Fundies (sic) gave up, and we all sang the ‘Hallelujah’ chorus as they quickly drove back to the suburbs.”

His time with the Sisters was a period of peak creativity for Baker.

"What the Sisters did was show him how you turn personal liberation into general liberation, and how you politicize your differences," says Katz.

Baker took his Sisters drag on the road with fellow sister Sadie, Sadie, Rabbi Lady to the Academy Awards in 1984. In matching black sequin nuns habits, the pair mixed with movie stars in their signature white face paint as they collected alms in a can labeled "Eddie Murphy's disease," a reference to the comedian's homophobic stand-up comedy act. In an unpublished essay, Baker wrote they almost got into the Shrine Auditorium for the awards but at the last moment were "booted out" by emcee Army Archerd.

"Gilbert could shmooze his way past barricades into any high-fashion event," says Bunch. "The gowns were so fabulous people must have thought they were movie stars."

Pink Jesus

One of the most vivid costumes in Jones' memory is Baker's pink Jesus costume, which consisted of an American flag loincloth and pink body paint. Baker wore the look twice in San Francisco, first to the 1990 Gay Pride Parade and then again in October to protest a fundamentalist Christian convention.

Gilbert Baker as “Pink Jesus” at a Gay Pride celebration in 1990. He spray-painted himself pink and was a “Martyr for Art” to protest U.S. Senator Jesse Helms’ efforts to defund the National Endowment for the Arts.

“He had his long hair still in a crown of thorns and carried a pink balsa wood cross,” says Jones. “He wanted to make people howl, and he did.”

Baker officially split with the Sisters in 1983. The group “sainted” Baker at his 2017 memorial service at the Castro Theatre.

“Something happened around that time when the Rev. Jerry Falwell and the Moral Majority got hold of images of him in Sisters’ drag and used them to make money,” says Jones. “He stepped back from it — he felt it was only giving ammunition to the right wing.”

But Baker didn’t abandon drag. In the essay, he wrote about protesting the Academy Awards again in 1989, this time in a French royal court look, which he had “sewn up with 100 yards of gold metallic lamé,” based on that year’s best-picture nominee “Dangerous Liaisons.” Baker and Sister Scarlot Harlot this time stayed in the bleachers and waved signs at celebrities with slogans like “Come Out Hollywood.”

“We got bigger fashion coverage than Cher,” Baker wrote.

In 1994, Baker left San Francisco for New York City. His decision not to trademark or monetize the flag meant he lived most of his life on a relatively modest income generated from sales of his fine art, personally sewn flags, and a 16-year ongoing sponsorship around the Pride Flag with Absolut Vodka. His final years were spent traveling the world to attend different gay pride celebrations, where he was lauded as a community icon.

“He was so proud and amazed at how the rainbow had been embraced across the world,” says Jones. “In the beginning, his art and drag were very confrontational but that evolved and changed as he changed and grew and saw more of the world.”

Baker is now considered a seminal figure of gay culture. In Dustin Lance Black's 2017 television adaptation of "When We Rise," he is portrayed by Jack Plotnick alongside lesbian activists Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon and slain San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk.

In 2012, Baker had a stroke and lost some of his motors skills on his left side, including the ability to paint and sew. According to Beal, Baker "packed up 15 trunks worth of fabric and sewing machines and retaught himself to sew by hand" over a summer in Fire Island, N.Y.

"He was in so much pain; it never really went away," says Jones. "But he went on and created hundreds more banners and flags for anyone who wanted them."

Baker made one such Pride flag for President Barack Obama in 2016.

Concentration camp uniform

Among the most symbolically powerful fashion pieces now in the possession of the GLBT archive are two different takes on striped concentration camp uniforms worn by gay prisoners. Jones and Beal believe these are the final fashions Baker created.

Gilbert Baker wears one of his concentration camp uniforms in 2017. It is thought to be one of the last costumes he created before his death.

“That was his reaction to the election of Trump,” says Jones. “He wore the uniform to an anti-Trump protest in Manhattan with a rolling wardrobe cart loaded with concentration camp wear.”

“The idea was, ‘Would you like to try one on?’” says Beal. “You’ll be wearing it soon.”

The front of the uniforms is emblazoned with the pink triangle used by the Nazis to identify gay prisoners, the back with the rainbow Baker created to replace the triangle as a symbol for the community.

In the fall of 2019, the Baker Collection will be exhibited by the GLBT Historical Society at its museum in the Castro. The plan is for the exhibition, which will examine Baker's life as a fine artist, fashion designer and the creator of the Pride flag, to coincide with the planned release of his memoir.

"Clearly he was so much more complex than just the creator of the flag," says archive director Joanna Black. "But that kind of was the stepping-off point for a lot of the other activism he was doing, including what he did with garments."

"I'm not sure I'd draw a distinction between the flag and his drag," says Katz. "He takes a nationalist symbol that demands patriotic fealty, that one adheres to a notion of borders, and he rewrites it so it's about everyone and everything. I think he did the same in his drag."

Gilbert Baker making 500 new flags for an installation on Market Street in 1998. (Jerry Telfer / The Chronicle 1998 | San Francisco Chronicle)

Tony Bravo is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: tbravo@sfchronicle.com. Style Files is an ongoing series that connections San Francisco's fashion past to the present. Visit www.sfchronicle.com/style-files.